A DEGREE OF THE SURREAL,

THE NOT-ENTIRELY-REAL,

AND THE MARKEDLY ANTI-REAL

About

1. The turbulent flow of air driven backward by the propeller or propellers of an aircraft. Also called race2.

2. The area of reduced pressure or forward suction produced by and immediately behind a fast-moving object as it moves through air or water.

intr.v.slip·streamed, slip·stream·ing, slip·streams

To drive or cycle in the slipstream of a vehicle ahead.

3. a kind of fantastic or non-realistic fiction that crosses conventional genre boundaries between science fiction and fantasy and mainstream literary fiction.

The term slipstream was coined by cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling in an article originally published in SF Eye #5, in July 1989. He wrote:

"...this is a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange; the way that living in the twentieth century makes you feel, if you are a person of a certain sensibility."

Slipstream fiction has consequently been referred to as "the fiction of strangeness," at the heart of which is a cognitive dissonance..

Slipstream falls between speculative fiction and mainstream fiction. While some slipstream novels employ elements of science fiction or fantasy, not all do. The common unifying factor of these pieces of literature is some degree of the surreal, the not-entirely-real, or the markedly anti-real.

Archive for the ‘Greylands eBook Launch announcements’ Category

Today is the last official day of this Greylands launch microsite. (in fact it will not come down until Monday evening when Min gets home from work) See it and comment before it vanishes, or forever hold your peace!

In due course, it will be archived by the Canberra Library – it will not be available for some time, but it will nevermore be interactive.
A place holder will be left in its wake, commemorating the site, and where you can access buttons to order the book as an eBook in English and eventually in German. Of course if you want a print book, that will soon be available and you can contact Ford street, who are republishing it. An audio book is also in the pipeline…

As for me, you will find me on my own blog at the end of November. It will be called TheSlipstream.

A place holder exists in the cyberspace where it is being built (by Min). The blog will be less long and dense and specific and frequent than the guest blogs I did for insideadog blog earlier their year. It will be a chamber where you will find dreamy and evocative detail- visual, imagined, aural, – presided over by a fox spirit with the power of metamorphoses. Imagine if you were visiting not my conscious mind, but my dreaming and subconscious mind. Or perhaps my daydreams…

The Greylands launch site with its debate essays will be archived on TheSlipstream, … continue reading

Tomorrow, this Greylands Launch site in all its depth and complexity, will self-destruct. I know it is wonderful – so much more than I imagined when Min and I devised it in theory- and I am touched how many emails and posts asked that it be left up, but in general, beautiful things do not last forever- indeed it may be part of their beauty that they are destined to fall.

Greylands, old and new.

What I would like to announce today, the penultimate announcement, is that one of the amazing things that has happened during the creation and the month and a bit during which the site had been live, is how much interest my eBook experiment stirred up in a very practical way, around my out of print books.

Greylands is now on the verge of being optioned as a movie and being remade as an audio book. And as a direct result of this site, the book also to be released again, re-edited with an accompanying essay, in traditional print form as a paperback from Ford Street Publishers. Indeed the book will be officially launched in its newest incarnation by Maureen McCarthy at the Victorian RACV club on October 1, as part of the aptly named Keeping Books Alive Conference (rob@childrenscharity.com.au for further details).

The conference is open only to delegates, but we will have a public event afterwards to celebrate, details to be announced on the Ford Street website.

It has been an exciting, interactive month for everyone who has contributed and commented on the Great eBook Debate, and Heather, Isobelle and I would like to thank all of you for taking the time to share their thoughts and experiences in such a polite, intelligent and diplomatic way.

Heather and Min

As promised at the beginning of the website launch, Isobelle has provided some prize packs, consisting of stories in many of the forms we have been discussing. Heather and I have alternated each day in choosing a featured commenter, in order to create a shortlist from which we could choose our winners.

Those who won in the end were selected not only because of the tone and experience behind their valuable contributions, but also because of the consistency of their engaging, thoughtful comments. They experienced and contributed to the entire journey. We feel they went above and beyond.

We have also decided to have a runner up, who will receive a small pile of signed books and audio books. We have awarded the runner-up prize to Daniel, who contributed regularly – his comments were always beautifully relevant to the topic of the day when he posted.

The three main prize winners will each receive a kindle, and a collection of signed print books (both hard and soft cover) and an audio book each.

The winners are, in no particular order:

Jo Turner
It was a common thread throughout the discussion – the attachment most people have to … continue reading